AUC Press Announces Mohammed Tarazi as the Winner of the 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
The American University in Cairo Press has announced that the 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature has been awarded to Lebanese novelist Mohammed Tarazi for his novel Mīkrūfūn kātim Ṣawt (Muted Microphone). The award ceremony, held at the historic Ewart Memorial Hall on AUC’s Tahrir Square Campus, celebrated Tarazi’s literary achievement alongside prominent writers and cultural figures from across Egypt.
Presented by Dr. Ahmad Dallal, President of the American University in Cairo, the winning novel was chosen by the members of the judging panel and selected from six shortlisted novels. The panel was chaired by Sarah Enany and included Kay Heikkinen, Ahmed Taibaoui, Youssef Rakha, and Maysa Zaki.
The ceremony began with President Dr. Ahmad Dallal introducing the prize, highlighting its history and significance, and setting the stage for the winner and judges to deliver their speeches. He also shared Naguib Mahfouz’s pride in the award and its value, quoting him: “The announcement of this award honoring writers and literature is the most pleasurable event on my birthday. I hope that this prize will also help to discover new talents in Arabic literature and introduce them to readers around the world.”
Head judge, Sarah Enany, remarked: “The jury selected Mīkrūfūn kātim Ṣawt (Muted Microphone) for the 2024 Naguib Mahfouz Award for its deep metaphor and imagery and powerful characters as well as its smooth narrative style. Although it discusses Lebanon today, it emerges from the limits of its own setting in space and time to unveil a general human reality for those of us in contemporary society who live in cities that stifle souls and kill dreams.”
Mohammed Tarazi accepted the award saying: “Perhaps it was this silence that struck a chord with the distinguished members of the committee, who chose to grant me the highest honor a writer can aspire to—a voice. This voice came in the form of a medal bearing the name of the great writer, Naguib Mahfouz, placing me among the remarkable creators recognized for their literary excellence and unwavering stand against hatred and tyranny.”
Thomas Willshire, Executive Director of AUC Press, acknowledged the incredible efforts of the judging panel saying: “I must thank our panel of five judges of the Mahfouz Award Committee, that despite full calendars of their own they have spent the last year reading and reviewing the 181submissions for the prize. These came from 18 countries across the Arab world. An embarrassment of riches that makes the selection of the six titles shortlisted for the prize, let alone the determination of a single winner, an achievement worthy of this celebration.”
Willshire added that the award ceremony also commemorates the 113th anniversary of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz Long before winning the Nobel Prize in 1988, he was already recognized as the towering figure of Arabic literature, the author of 34 novels, more than 350 short stories, dozens of screenplays and five plays over an extensive career that paralleled Egypt’s history during the 20th century. In 1985, AUC Press began translating the works of Naguib Mahfouz into English.
The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, established in 1996, recognizes the best contemporary novel published in Arabic in the past two years. In addition to 5,000 cash prize, the winner receives a trophy and an English translation of their work, published under AUC Press’s renowned fiction imprint, Hoopoe.
The AUC Press has been the originating publisher of Naguib Mahfouz’s English-language editions for more than thirty years and has also been responsible for the licensing of some 600 foreign-language editions of the Nobel laureate’s works in more than 40 languages around the world since the author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. With up to 60 new publications annually and more than 800 titles in print, the AUC Press is recognized as the region’s leading English-language publisher.
About the Novel
Muted Microphone
“Mīkrūfūn kātim Ṣawt” published by Arab Scientific Publishers, Inc., 2023
The novel depicts the deterioration experienced in Lebanon since 2019, marked by economic collapse, the spread of COVID-19, the scarcity of household essentials, and the aftermath of the Beirut Port explosion. It documents the decline, serving as a muted outcry—as the title suggests—against the ruling elite.
Silencing microphones choke the city and serve as a tool to silence protesting voices and promote illusory achievements. The cemetery, which is the setting in this narrative, symbolizes the inescapable decay, and while the presence of the sea gives a glimmer of hope, it is in reality another graveyard for the migrants seeking a better life. The novel revisits and reinterprets the Lebanese reality through characters that are as real as they are fictional, through contrasts and internal contradictions. The protagonist, Sultan, a young man born in a house overlooking the cemetery and eager to emigrate, finds himself, in the end, trapped between two cemeteries.
About the judging panel
This year’s six shortlisted titles were chosen from 181 novels submitted from 18 countries across the Arab world and outside it by a panel of esteemed judges, chaired by Sarah Enany, professor in the English Department of Cairo University and winner of the Banipal Prize for Literary Translation. She is joined by Ahmed Taibaoui, winner of the Best Arabic Novel Prize at the Sharjah International Book Fair in 2023 and the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2021; Kay Heikkinen, formerly at the University of Chicago, and winner of the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation; Youssef Rakha, novelist, poet, and essayist; and Maysa Zaki, literary and theater critic with over thirty years of experience in the field.
